18 Facts About The Silence of the Lambs

Believe it or not, The Silence of the Lambs was released on Valentine’s Day in 1991. The movie was scheduled for release in the middle of February because Orion Pictures, its distributor, already had a can't-miss hit with Dances With Wolves, and they wanted to give Kevin Costner as little competition as possible for the 1991 awards season. The strategy paid off, as Wolves won seven Oscars. But one year later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences didn’t—and/or couldn’t—forget about Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling. On the occasion of the film's 25th anniversary, here are 18 things you might not have known about The Silence of the Lambs.

1. IT’S THE THIRD FILM TO EVER WIN ALL OF THE "BIG FIVE" OSCARS—BEST PICTURE, ACTOR, ACTRESS, DIRECTOR, AND SCREENPLAY.

The other two were It Happened One Night in 1935, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976.

2. GENE SISKEL GAVE IT A THUMBS DOWN.

Gene Siskel infamously didn’t see what all the fuss was about, dismissing the movie as a “star-studded freak show” and writing that The Silence of the Lambs was “a case of much ado about nothing.” The Oscars, and Roger Ebert, disagreed.

4. GENE HACKMAN WAS INITIALLY GOING TO STAR AND DIRECT.

Gene Hackman and Orion Pictures split the $500,000 needed to purchase the movie rights to the book. But Hackman dropped out days after he watched clips of himself at the 1989 Oscars as FBI Agent Rupert Anderson in Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning; he decided he didn't want to follow up a dark role with an even more unlikable character.

5. MICHELLE PFEIFFER WAS THE FIRST CHOICE TO PLAY CLARICE.

Jodie Foster initially wanted to buy the film rights to Thomas’ book herself, but Hackman beat her to it. She then settled for fighting for the role of FBI agent Clarice Starling. Director Jonathan Demme wanted Pfeiffer, but like a lot of other actors, she was “concerned about the darkness of the piece.” Demme didn’t like Foster’s Boston accent in her movie The Accused, even though it won her an Oscar, but after meeting the determined actress twice, he changed his mind.

6. FOSTER WAS CONCERNED THAT THE FBI WAS GOING TO LOOK STUPID.

Demme directed the 1988 comedy Married to the Mob (starring Pfeiffer), which didn’t portray the FBI in the smartest light. After the agency impressed Foster with their handling of a death threat against her, they had earned her respect, enough that she approached Demme before filming to make sure that the FBI would be portrayed “in the correct way.”

10. LECTER NEVER SAID "HELLO, CLARICE."

11. THE AUTHOR DID NOT BASE HANNIBAL ON ANYONE.

He was a general composite of all of the evil that Thomas Harris saw while doing research. "There is no one, thank goodness, like him," said FBI profiler John Douglas, the inspiration for Jack Crawford.

12. SCOTT GLENN BROKE DOWN WHILE RESEARCHING HIS ROLE AS CRAWFORD.

Douglas gave Glenn a tour of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. After hearing tapes of serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris raping and torturing a 16-year-old girl, Glenn walked out “in tears,” and was suddenly in favor of the death penalty.

13. MOST OF THE FILM WAS SHOT AROUND PITTSBURGH.

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The outside of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is in fact the exterior of the Western Center Hospital in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. Western Center closed in 2000, but was saved from demolition after it was designated as a historical landmark.

14. BUFFALO BILL’S HOUSE WAS THE HOME OF A HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS TEACHER.

Bentworth High School’s Harold Lloyd claimed that some crew members were rude, items were stolen, and a security guard was fired for running tours through the house at night. Last summer, the house went up for sale; in January, the price was dropped to $250,000.

15. BUFFALO BILL WAS BASED ON THREE SERIAL KILLERS.

They were Ted Bundy, Gary M. Heidnik, and Ed Gein. Thomas Harris even attended some of Bundy’s murder trial and sent him a copy of Red Dragon.

16. BUFFALO BILL’S DANCE WAS NOT IN THE SCREENPLAY.

But it was in the original book and Ted Levine, the actor who played the serial killer Jame Gumb, insisted that the scene be included because it helped explain the demented character better.